XTIDE controller now available

[Michael B. Brutman]

Steven Hirsch wrote:
> On Fri, 2 Oct 2009, Jim Leonard wrote:
> 
>> I wanted to let all of you know that the 2nd revision of my friend's 
>> PC/XT IDE controller is now available.  For those of you not in the 
>> know, this is a way of using modern IDE hard drives in your 8bit PC or 
>> XT system.  Works with drives up to 137G (your O/S also has to support 
>> it; 8.4G is way more common) and Compact Flash->IDE controllers too. 
>> CD-ROM support is likely coming eventually, but he has to write an 
>> entire driver that MSCDEX would talk to.
> 
> What am I not understanding about the need for this product?  I have 
> about a half-dozen 8-bit ISA IDE controllers, mostly Seagate branded.  
> Didn't think they were particularly rare.
> 
> Steve
> 
> 

Funny, but now I know why the rest of us can't find them - you have a 
personal stockpile!  Most of us can't find them on eBay or other places.

This one has a BIOS that supports LBA mode drives.  It was pretty funny 
seeing DOS 7 boot on a PC XT 5160.  The BIOS is also flashable, which is 
a nice feature.  (And we expect the source code to be openly available.)

There will be announcements and pointers to a proper page/site when 
these things are more production ready.



Mike